


Anything Past The Horizon

by creamsodaplease



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (it's very small i promise), Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), One Shot, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25744369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creamsodaplease/pseuds/creamsodaplease
Summary: Sirius says, "I'm glad I have you as a friend.""I'm glad I have you as a friend, too." Remus says it quietly, but Sirius had memorized the intonations of his voice long ago.What would have happened if Sirius went to Remus's house instead of James's the summer after sixth year when he got kicked out? Heavy on the comfort and light on the angst. Includes storms, card-playing, and boys kissing. x-posted to ffnet.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 72





	Anything Past The Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> Hey!! Big thanks to @ladypseudonym for betaing for me. I wrote this a few months ago as a sort of escape and I finished editing it tonight when I most definitely should be sleeping lol. I hope you like it!!  
> (title from Richard Siken's Road Music which is from his book Crush!)

“Don’t have too much fun, boys!” Lyall Lupin calls as Sirius and Remus race up the stairs. They both ignore him. Sirius shuts the door behind the both of them in Remus’s room. Remus sprawls out on the bed and Sirius makes the conscious decision to  _ not  _ look at the bare inch of skin on his stomach exposed by his jumper riding up.

“Hey, Remus, what records do you have?” Sirius asks. He knows it’s stupid, but it was the first thing that came to mind.

“Why are you asking? You think all my records are stupid, anyway,” Remus says, only slightly miffed. It wasn’t his fault Sirius had absolutely no taste, after all.

“Whatever. Forget I asked.”

Remus gets up and looks through the bottom shelf of records, selecting one and putting in on the player. “You did ask, which means I get to play something even if you hate it.”

“I don’t think that’s what that means.”

Remus looks back at him and shoots him a grin that’s just so  _ Remus _ . “Of course it does.”

The plucked guitar of Simon and Garfunkel wash over both of them and Sirius rolls his eyes. “I should’ve known you would play this. It’s exactly the type of soft boy shit I should’ve expected.”

Remus scoffs dramatically and pulls a deck of cards off the shelf. “Oh, like  _ you’re  _ any better. Come on. All the music you like is just noise, and it hurts my head every time you blast it. Besides, it’s  _ relaxing _ . What else would I listen to on a rainy day?” It had been storming since he woke up that morning.

Sirius just laughs. “Firstly, it’s punk rock, you heathen. It’s art.” He ticks off a second point on his fingers. “And I’m sorry I’ve hurt your delicate constitution, Remus. What are you, a sickly Victorian orphan child?”

“Oh, that’s low. Come on, sit down. Let’s play a game.” Remus motions for him to sit and Sirius obliges.

“What game? Is it poker? No, let me guess. Strip poker? Oh, you’re bad, Moony!” Sirius waggles his eyebrows at Remus.

“ _ No _ , you absolute sicko, it’s called Mao, and there is no stripping involved. Aren’t I a sickly Victorian orphan child? Think of the children, Padfoot! You’ll scar me!” Remus says as he deals the cards—seven for him, seven for Sirius. Sirius watches his hands move over the cards and swallows.  _ Be friendly, Sirius _ , he reminds himself.  _ You’re just friends _ .

“Alright, no stripping. How do you play, anyway?” Sirius takes his hand of cards.

“Ah, I can’t tell you that. All you get to know is that I’m the Mao Master, and once I say the game is Mao, it starts—and no talking,” Remus said mischievously. At Sirius’s puppy-dog face, Remus changed his mind. “Oh, all right. You’re allowed to talk. I’ll take pity on you.”

Remus arranges the cards so they have a draw pile. “And before I forget: if you win, you get to make a new rule.” He flips a card over—two of hearts. “The game is Mao,” he says, and places a card from his hand over the one he flipped. “Your turn.”

Sirius shrugs and sets down a card. Remus pulls three cards from the draw pile and hands them to Sirius. “Failure to say have a nice day, failure to say hierarchy, and improper card placement.” The game is on.

They play on, but Sirius thinks he isn’t as used to this as he should be. He cares about Remus and Peter, truly, but James has always been his best mate. Everyone knows that, and it isn’t a competition, but he’s starting to wonder if maybe he should be spending more time with them. He can’t remember the last time he was alone with anyone but James, even though he wished he was alone with Remus more often.

Three rounds later, Sirius has finally sort of grasped the rules and even, by some stroke of miracle, won once. He picks a really terrible, or, alternatively, really fun, rule. Every time the suit changes, one of them has to say a truth.

It happens to Sirius first. “I dislike asparagus.”

Remus raises his eyebrows. “Oh? What brings that up?”

“Just play, Moony.”

The next time the suit changes, he gets to card Moony. He feels almost too smug about that. He puts it down to the punk notion of getting to give back what had been used to penalize him, even though he knows it’s because Remus does a cute little frown whenever he gets carded.

Remus, because he has a very large brain, figures out the rule right away and is ready the next time the suit changes. “My favorite chocolate isn’t actually Honeyduke’s Finest.”

Sirius gasps mock-horrified. “Oh my, how scandalous! What chocolate outranks the Finest?”

Remus laughs, just a little. “It’s a muggle brand. They’re called Lindt chocolates and they’re heavenly.”

The next time the suit changes, Sirius says, “I’m glad I have you as a friend.”

“I’m glad I have you as a friend too.” Remus says it quietly, but Sirius had memorized the intonations of his voice long ago.

It starts to rain again and Remus switches the Simon and Garfunkel record for a Bob Dylan one. They play on, sometimes telling each other secrets, sometimes simple things. Remus wins the round.

Sirius insists on shuffling, and while he’s waiting for his hand, Remus speaks. “Are we going to talk about it tonight?”

“About what?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Sirius. You came here, dripping wet from the storm, with nothing but your wand and you won’t tell me anything but that you’re never going back home. Why did you come here, and not James’s? What happened? Did you leave, or did they kick you out? Did they…hurt you?”

Sirius pauses from sorting the cards. “This game was a lot more from when you made fun of me for not knowing how to play,” he says honestly. “And when you weren’t grilling me.” He’s not talking about this. Not now, not for as long as he can hold it off. He can’t think about what had happened this morning right now or ever.

“Sirius. I’m just worried, okay?”

Sirius shrugs. “Look, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I just need to not think for a while.” He takes a deep breath before letting it out and dropping his cards on the draw pile. “I’m going to get ready for bed. Where do you keep toothbrushes?”

Remus leads Sirius down the hall to the bathroom and hands him a toothbrush. They brush their teeth in silence.

Remus inspects the sink as he worries. His stomach twists when he thinks of Sirius just moments before, blatantly avoiding answering anything he had asked. His stomach twists even worse when he thinks about what exactly he hadn’t answered. Was it worse if he was kicked out? What if they did hurt him? Remus knew it was bad at home, but none of them knew the specifics, only that sometimes he came back from summer holiday with bruises that no one talked about. Remus made sure to take some extra bruise cream with him from the last full moon to school with him every year just in case.

And why hadn’t he gone to James’s? Remus keeps wondering about that. Nothing about Sirius makes sense.

Sirius avoids worrying about anything at all. He distracts himself by focusing on the water flecks in the mirror. It’s easier that way.

Sirius spits into the sink. “You’ve got your thinking face on, Moony. It’s bothering me.” He says it lightly, but Remus can tell there’s a question behind it.

Remus spits. “It’s nothing. We’ll talk in the morning.”

They pad back across the hall into Remus’s bedroom. Remus gives him a pair of pajamas—“Oh, just take them, Padfoot”—and Sirius changes in Remus’s bedroom. Remus changes in the bathroom.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” says Sirius once Remus gets back. He tries to ignore the way Remus’s hip bones look in his black pajama bottoms unsuccessfully.

Remus balks. “Of course not! I’ll sleep on the floor. You’re my guest  _ and  _ you ran away from home. I think you get to sleep in a real bed.”

“That’s stupid and you know it. It’s  _ your  _ bed.”

Remus rolls his eyes. “No. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“Frankly, I’m barely keeping my eyes open and you’re way too chivalrous for a sixteen year old boy, so why don’t we both take the bed?”

“Chivalrous? That’s a big word for you, Padfoot.” Remus laughs a little. “And anyway, it’s not big enough.”

“First of all, yes, we  _ will  _ fit, because you can fit two normal-sized people on that bed, and despite my enormous muscles making me much larger than a normal person, you are the size of a string bean and even me out. Therefore, we will fit on the bed. Second of all, even though you hate to believe it, I do actually know things. I will recite a list of big words that I know just to prove it. Truculent. Photosynthesis. Injudiciously. Insou—”

Remus cuts him off. “Fine, yes, I admit it, you are knowledgeable about some things. And yes, I guess we can both fit on the bed.”

Sirius pumps his fist. “Victory! Now go climb in bed and I’ll tuck you in.”

“Of course,  _ mom _ ,” says Remus, but he goes anyway because it’s really very late and he ought to get some sleep.

Sirius flips the light switch and climbs in under the duvet next to Remus, making sure not to touch him whatsoever. It is, suddenly, very, very awkward. Sirius holds his breath. They’re laid out next to each other stock-still like corpses. Sirius lets out his breath.

“What?” asks Remus.

“Nothing.”

There’s a pause before he speaks again. “I’m just—not used to this, is all. My bed’s—roomier, at home.” He pauses again. “Not that I’m ungrateful or anything. I am, really. Grateful, I mean.”

Lightning flashes outside, illuminating Remus nodding his head up and down. “Ah. Sorry my bed’s not very big.”

Sirius swallows. “’S fine.”

Remus falls asleep by some miracle. He must be used to feeling awkward, or at least more than Sirius is. He hadn’t fallen asleep by the time Remus’s worry had melted enough to let him drift off to the sound of rain beating down on the house.

Sirius holds himself still long past when he noticed Remus’s breathing slow down. He tosses and turns a bit after that, but he can’t get his head to quiet enough to sleep. He keeps replaying all the moments leading up to him standing at Remus’s front step.

Sirius takes a few breaths before the tears start. It’s been like this since before he could remember. He’s never been able to be vulnerable in front of other people. He masks it well, he thinks, with humor and faux self-assuredness, but that drops once he’s alone—or alone enough, he thinks, looking at Remus asleep.

He shouldn’t be particularly sad about leaving his family. They hurt him whenever he saw them, whether physically or not. The things they said about his friends alone were enough to make him run away—he’s reminded of this morning.

Walburga, over her breakfast of tea and toast with jam, had made an absent but deliberately cutting comment. She had asked which of his friends he sold out—the blood traitor or the poor, fat one? Ah, wait; it must have been the half-blood creature. Well, no matter, she had said, because no matter which one it had been, he had still aided Severus in the protection of Hogwarts from those disgusting  _ things _ . Sirius hadn’t even heard the last half of her comment—once he heard the words “half-blood creature” out of her mouth like it was a curse he had thrown his fine-china teacup directly into her face. It’s a pity she had her wand, he thought, because there’s nothing better than a tea-splattered, shattered-china covered Walburga.

He feels worse about the tears remembering this. There are so many memories throughout his entire life that remind him that his biological family is nothing compared to the family he’s found, but he still can’t help but cry.

He’s losing what could have been. He’s losing what he had, too, he thinks, when he remembers the look on Regulus’s face at his declaration that he was done with the most ancient and noble house of Black. His brother loved him—loves him still, maybe.

He turns over, against the wall, and puts his arm over his face to muffle his crying but it’s no use. Remus shifts next to him. There are two flashes, lighting up the room—the cards on the shelf next to the record player, the clothes basket, the stacks of books, the chocolate wrappers in the wastebasket—and then two enormous cracks of thunder, the second stronger than the first. Each one shakes the house, and Sirius can hear the trees outside being whipped by the wind.

Remus wakes up. Sirius tries to stifle his crying, quieting his breath. Remus blinks and turns to look at Sirius and, oh, how he wants the ground to swallow him up. He wants a nearby tree to fall on the house. He wants lightning to strike the house and force this conversation into another time entirely, but Remus blatantly ignores what he wants.

“Sirius?” It’s a whisper. Sirius doesn’t respond.

“Sirius, hey.” This time, it’s not a question. Sirius thinks if he opens his mouth he might start crying again.

Remus moves his body closer to Sirius until he closes their gap. He puts his arms around him. Sirius twists to look at Remus and the knot in his stomach that had been steadily forming all day eases the tiniest bit.

Remus moves closer, closer, until their noses are nearly touching and their lips are centimeters from each other. “It’s going to be okay,” he says just as another rumble of thunder shakes the house, and Sirius can feel him talking more than hear it.

He presses a tear-filled kiss to Sirius’s lips before tucking his chin over Sirius’s shoulder. They’re all intertwined now, and neither is sure where they end and the other begins. Sirius, somewhere through the haze of pain and sleep deprivation, feels fireworks going off all over his body.

“It’s going to be okay,” Remus mumbles into Sirius’s hair, over and over again. “It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you.”

Sirius can’t speak, so instead he holds Remus just a little bit tighter. Then, finally, he falls asleep.

Sometime later, he wakes up again. Remus is still asleep and the light shines golden through the window, turning everything to honey. He likes waking up like this.

Remus blinks awake. “Sirius?” He croaks, and Sirius smiles.

“Good morning.”

“Last night, did we—?” He looks confused, and Sirius’s stomach swoops.

“I’m sorry, I was just sad and you were comforting me, is all. We don’t have to ever talk about it again.” He says it all in a rush. It’s easier to just get things said and done with. The air is suddenly hard to breathe.

“No, that’s not—we shouldn’t just ignore it,” says Remus.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I just—are you sure you want to do this?” Remus bites his bottom lip. “I’m not like some girl you get to use, Sirius.”

“No, Remus, I—I  _ know  _ that. I just…it’s all a lot right now. I want you with me, but I don’t want to do anything…definitive?” It comes out as a question. He knows he can’t fuck this up which makes everything he’s saying so much worse. He hates every word coming out of his mouth.

“Boys! Pancakes are ready!” Lyall calls from the kitchen.

Remus sighs. “We  _ are  _ going to talk about this later,” he says, and shoves himself out of bed.

He sticks out his hand for Sirius to take. It’s a truce, and Sirius will take a truce. “But for now, I think breakfast sounds good.”


End file.
